A consortium of over a dozen financial and technology giants, including BlackRock, Coinbase, Ripple, and Mastercard, has announced the launch of OUSD, a new stablecoin designed to distribute reserve earnings to participating institutions through a shared governance model. The project, led by Open Standard, is scheduled to go live later this year.
Zero-Fee Minting and Shared Governance
Open Standard said OUSD aims to solve two long-standing pain points for businesses using stablecoins: high fees for large-scale minting and redemption, and the inability to earn any yield from the reserve assets backing the stablecoin. Under the new structure, partners can mint and redeem OUSD with zero fees and without artificial volume caps. After deducting a small management fee for operational expenses, the remaining reserve income is distributed among all participating organizations.
Governance is also a break from tradition. Instead of a single issuer controlling the stablecoin, OUSD will be managed by a joint board composed of representatives from partner firms, giving member institutions a direct say in key decisions.
Solana and Tempo First, Heavyweight Lineup
OUSD will launch natively on two Layer-1 blockchains: Solana and Tempo. Solana has confirmed native support from day one, highlighting the stablecoin's decentralized governance model paired with zero-fee minting and redemption.
The consortium includes BlackRock, Coinbase, Ripple, Mastercard, and several other financial and technology companies. Samara Cohen, BlackRock's Global Head of Market Development, said the firm believes stablecoins can play an important role in digital markets when backed by trusted infrastructure and practical utility. "Open USD is a constructive step toward giving businesses more choice in how they access tokenized value and participate in internet native digital rails," she added. Coinbase Chief Business Officer Shan Aggarwal noted that stablecoins remain one of the most important developments in payments, and stronger shared infrastructure can help bridge the gap between legacy payment systems and blockchain capabilities.
Institutional Stablecoin Race Heats Up
The announcement follows recent collaborations involving some of the same companies. Ripple and Coinbase recently backed Mastercard's AI-powered payment system designed for stablecoin-based AI agent transactions. Ripple has also proposed a lending protocol on XRP Ledger that allows financial institutions to borrow digital assets without selling their holdings, supporting tokenized U.S. Treasuries, money market funds, stablecoins, commodities, private credit, and other real-world assets.
If launched as planned, OUSD will enter an increasingly competitive institutional stablecoin market where issuers are moving beyond payments and settlement to offer governance participation, tokenized asset support, and revenue-sharing models tailored for large financial institutions.